Fool's Errand
by Kukapetal
Summary: Everyone's least favorite Psycho Bandit gets a taste of his own medicine...and learns about a little thing called "guilt." Now, in a desperate attempt to make it go away, he decides to help someone he has wronged. Will he succeed? Does anyone care?
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

**I don't own Borderlands. No, really. I literally don't own a copy of it. I need to purchase one. Given my admittedly limited experience with the game, please feel free to point out mistakes…but be gentle, if you can :P**

Flesh-Stick yawned as he raised his head groggily and peered at the doorway of the cluttered, one-room shack that served as his home. No light shining around the edges of the ragged cloth that hung over the doorway yet. That meant it was still Third Sleep, although how many hours were left of it, he wasn't sure. He'd had a clock once, but he'd smashed it a while back when it wouldn't shut up one afternoon. Now he could only roll over onto his belly with a groan and wonder if he should bother trying to go back to sleep. There was fuck-all to do at this hour, but if he fell back to sleep only an hour before sunrise, he would be groggy when he got up, and that always made the fuzziness in his head worse.

A distant shout caused him to raise his head for a moment. He listened, but didn't hear anything else out on the windswept tundra. Some idiot probably was going for a piss in the pitch black and tripped over something. Bunch of fucking morons in this camp, every last one of them. He dropped his head back down onto the roll of dirty cloth that he used as a pillow. Meltwater Crossing was a dull place, much less comfortable and exciting than his old camp further south. He'd been in charge of that one for a while, and it had been sweet. Not only had it been much closer to civilization, making their raids far more numerous and productive, but he'd also had a swell little deal with Hyperion going that provided them with more wealth than all their other raids put together.

He chuckled softly to himself. It had been so easy. Hyperion needed "test subjects" for some sort of experiments, and was willing to pay handsomely for every live prisoner delivered. And there was an ample supply of stupid morons from the nearby settlements who practically walked around with signs on their backs saying "Kidnap Me." Flesh-Stick and his friends had always been happy to oblige them. They had all lived like kings for a while, until the people began to run out. Then their situation had gone downhill and Flesh-Stick himself had run off when things had gotten bad enough. Or maybe he'd been chased off. Had be been ousted from power by someone toward the end? He couldn't rightly remember. Like all Psycho Bandits, his mind was perpetually fuzzy, and memories were often hazy and disjointed.

He supposed it didn't really matter though. He'd left, for whatever reason, and had eventually ended up here. This camp was okay…there was food and shelter here, he could eat and sleep and fuck and fight when he needed to, but that was pretty much _all _it was. Raids were few and far between and accommodations were utilitarian. There simply weren't enough people out here on the tundra to support anything more than a small, primitive encampment.

And what few neighbors they _did _have out here were better-off avoided. Flesh-Stick himself had had a close encounter with one of them a week ago…

He groaned in embarrassment and turned over in bed, as if trying to turn his back on the humiliating memory. A little girl. He'd been caught by a little girl, one still young enough to wear bunny dresses and have tea parties with her dollies. He'd been forced to attend one such party, and she'd electrocuted the shit out of him with a special chair she'd hooked up to a generator…all while making small talk with the other "guests." She would have killed him if he hadn't been lucky enough to be rescued by some of his "comrades." He'd honestly been surprised they'd bothered…the fuckers had probably just been happy to have something to fight that day. The little twat had had a Vault Hunter with her, and the Hunter had gunned down a fair number of the other bandits, but one of the Goliaths had managed to knock the generator out of commission. Flesh-Stick had managed to escape with his life…and a huge piss stain on the front of his pants. Since then, he had fallen even further in the others' eyes. Some of them had even taken to calling him "Monsieur Flesh-Stick," in reference to his little tea party adventure...

His embarrassment gave way to anger when he thought of the brat probably sleeping snug in her bed right now. The little shit didn't know that her nights of pleasant dreams were numbered. He was going to sneak over there some fine evening and ambush her. Kill her and string her up by her own intestines. Soon. Very soon.

But not yet. Not because he was afraid, of course, but because he didn't want to fall into another trap the way he had the first one. He didn't want to be so stupid twice. His muddled mind wasn't yet hazy enough that he couldn't make the connection between his stupidity and the stupidity of the fools he'd captured and turned over to Hyperion. Being tortured was bad enough…being tortured and suspecting you deserved it was something he found downright frightening.

Another shout off in the distance. This one sounded angry. And a bit closer, too. What the hell were those idiots up to out there? Couldn't they let a guy sulk in peace?

As if whatever shitty god in charge of Pandora was mocking him, several more voices joined in the yelling party. In fact, it sounded like thee was a decent sized crowd out there now, and they sounded almost…alarmed.

And then he heard it. The heavy clank and dull screeching of large machinery. The rattle of gunfire. The screams, now a whole chorus of them, shouting in what was now unmistakably panic.

Flesh-Stick rolled out of bed, already reaching for his boots, all his other troubles forgotten. A fight. There was a fight! A fight! There was a fight outside and he wanted to be there and he wanted to be in the middle of it and he wanted to run and scream and kill and the blood, oh the blood and the pain, his or someone else's it didn't matter it was lovely anyway…

The fuzziness around the edges of his mind was closing in fast now. If he let it close all the way, it would drown him and then he might not resurface until after the fight…if he survived it anyway. He became just as foolish and reckless as any other Psycho when he succumbed to his urges, and the last time he had given in, he had awakened as the guest of honor at a mad tea party. He sometimes wondered if being spared the worst of the madness that raged within every single member of his kind was really the blessing it was supposed to be. Often, it seemed like the only real difference was the ability to be both lucid _and_ helpless to stop himself as he engaged in self-destructive behavior. At least if he were fully mad, he wouldn't have to suffer the additional problem of caring about it.

He hesitated, one boot on and the other lying beside him. A part of him-the part that he was most aware of at night, when it was quiet and he was alone without a thousand distractions pulling his mind in as many directions-didn't want to go out there. That part wanted to flee and save his skin. But there was another part of him, a bigger, louder part that burned with an unquenchable fire and drowned out the protests from the other. That part wanted the pain and killing and chaos. It liked…no, _relished _the idea of letting the fuzziness close in and sweep him away. And it found the sounds of the battle outside a siren song that was impossible to resist.

He finished pulling on his boots and groped blindly in the dark for his buzz axe. His hand touched something hard, something sticky, something wiggling and something pointy before closing on the handle of his trusty weapon. As soon as the buzz axe was in his hand, he let the madness close blissfully over his mind like a soft, heavy curtain. Now ready to join the fun, he got to his feet, pushed aside the heavy cloth flap, and charged out into the fray.

He immediately took a swipe at the nearest moving thing and a second later there was a scream as a Bandit named Chicken Choker fell to his knees in front of him, clutching at the bloody stump where his hand had been.

"What the _fuck, _'Stick?" shouted Choker, as blood splattered his face in rhythmic spurts.

Flesh-Stick giggled. "It's Flesh-Stick, not Fuck-Stick," he corrected. He waggled a finger in Choker's face. "_How _long have we known each other for?" Actually, he didn't have a clue.

"You cut off my fucking _hand!" _the other bandit screamed at him.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll buy you a new one," Flesh-Stick told him, already bored of this. He wasn't going to get any fighting done standing here and arguing with Chicken Choker while he bled out. He scanned the area around his house for something to kill and almost jumped when he saw something huge and yellow near the munitions shed. Was that a _Loader?_

"Hyperion's here?" he said, to no one in particular. What the hell could Hyperion possibly want at this backwater shithole of a Bandit camp?

His only answer was a sharp pain in his calf that made him yelp. He looked down to see that Choker had plunged a switchblade into Flesh-Stick's leg using his good hand.

"Hey! What was that for?" he snarled, neatly cleaving the bastard's head down the middle with one swipe from his buzz axe. Whoops. Guess he'd never find out.

Then he was off, as fast as he could run with a switch-blade sticking out of his leg. He hadn't had a chance to fight a Loader in a long time. Although they lacked the wonderful buckets of spraying blood he so craved, their massive size meant that they presented a considerable challenge, and that in itself could be satisfying.

Making a wide circle around the Loader, which was preoccupied with smashing through what had once been Chicken Choker's house, Flesh-Stick soon found himself behind it. He stuck his buzz axe into his belt and then took a running leap onto a pile of crates next to the munitions shed. From there, he made another short hop and seized the edge of the roof. The sharp splintery wood that made up the roof dug into his palms, cutting into his flesh in the spots where it was exposed. The delicious pain gave him an extra adrenaline burst that he used to hoist himself up onto the roof. Now he was at the same level as the Loader's "head."

He pulled the buzz-axe out of his pants and took another running leap off the edge of the roof. "Kamikaze Krush!" he screamed out, almost with a touch of pride, as he launched himself toward the robot. He'd come up with that attack name himself. No one else could use it.

He hit the back of the Loader with a _clang _and wrapped both his arms and legs tightly around its neck. He felt himself start to turn in a wide circle as the Loader stumbled around and flailed at its head with its clunky hands, trying to dislodge him. One hand swooped near him and he struck out at it with his buzz-axe. There was a screech of metal and a shower of sparks and then the rusty blade of the buzz-axe snapped against the Loader's tough metal casing and went spinning away into the darkness, leaving Flesh-Stick holding a glorified club.

Well, shit. He'd been meaning to get that blade replaced. He half-heartedly whacked the Loader's head a few times with his new and considerably less badass weapon, but that didn't do anything except make noise. Then one of the Loader's hands struck his right arm and sent the buzz-axe handle flying from his grasp. Good. It sucked anyway.

Then he was scrambling around to the front of the Loader as the machine swatted at the back of its neck, trying to knock him to the ground. He found himself staring it in its single red eye. What luck! The eyes were always the weak points on these contraptions. He grinned and ripped the switchblade free from his leg, the sharp spike of pain that accompanied the action fueling his strike. He plunged it as deep as it would go into the robot's eye socket.

Which actually wasn't that far. His tiny weapon wasn't nearly strong enough to penetrate through the eye's outer covering. The tip stuck fast in plastic, or glass, or whatever it was and then snapped off. Flesh-Stick snarled in frustration…and then let out a squawk as the Loader's hand flattened him against its head.

"Bad touch! I'm telling!" he screamed, smashing the now broken knife back into the Loader's eye socket as hard as he could. This time he heard a faint and high-pitched crack, a sound like ice on a frozen pond cracking beneath an unwary traveler's feet.

Then he cried out as heat and pain surged through his limbs and froze them in a helpless pose of agony. She was electrocuting him again. She was electrocuting him! Stop it! It hurt it hurt it hurt make it stop someone help someone please make it stop!

"AAARRGHHH!" he screamed, as the world fell away from him, leaving him floating in a void of suffering. And then his scream cut off in a yelp as something hit him hard in the back and broke apart, leaving him lying in a pile of sharp pointy things.

After a brief and not terribly refreshing nap, Flesh-Stick raised his head stupidly. He had fallen against a pile of crates outside the munitions shed. The Loader was staggering around, electricity still crackling around its head as it clawed at its damaged eye-socket. Then, with a sound like water hitting a hot skillet, the robot fell forward and crashed to the ground.

"Piece of…of…of cake…" he lied, wondering if anyone was going to need him to fight anything else in the next four or five years. He wasn't sure he was up to it. Maybe it was time for a vacation. Get a little house in the country, raise some chickens, dispense good, down-to-earth advice to wayward travelers, make furniture out of their body parts…that kind of thing. Maybe he'd write his memoires while he was at it.

The clanking of machinery told him that his memoir-writing, chicken-raising, traveler-taxidermy dream would have to wait for the moment. He did his best to sit up as another Loader marched around the side of the munitions shed. The thing's head swiveled this way and that, looking for victims. Flesh-Stick tried to slide back into the shadows, but his hands skidded on a bunch of slippery little cylinders and he toppled backwards with a squawk.

"Shit!" he cried, as the Loader turned toward him. He tried to get to his feet and slipped on more cylinders. With a snarl, he looked down to see just what the hell he was sliding around on…and almost squealed in delight.

Bullets! The crates had been full of bullets! Must have been extras that didn't fit inside the shed itself. Perfect! Enough bullets would take any Loader down, and he was sitting on hundreds of them.

"Eat lead, Decepticons!" he screeched, as he hurled a huge handful of bullets at the Loader. Grinning, he waited for the explosion and the heavy clatter of the Loader falling forward to take a dirt nap.

Instead, the vast majority of the bullets fell short of their target and the few that did hit it just bounced off harmlessly with a series of metallic _pings!_

"I hate being stupid," he grumbled as the Loader raised a hand toward him.

To his surprise, he wasn't blasted to smithereens by a grenade or charred to ashes by a flamethrower. Instead, a number of thick, sticky "ropes" shot out of the giant mech's palm. They splattered all around him, and when he tried to push them off, they stuck and snarled together until he was hopelessly tangled up in them.

"Hey! No fair!" he protested as he was dragged toward the Loader. "You don't bring a net to a gunfight! Or a knife fight! Or a-WAAH!" He yelped as he was lifted roughly off the ground and swung violently from side to side as the Loader turned and began walking in another direction.

He flailed uselessly against the net for several minutes before remembering that he still had a knife clipped to his belt. He got to work sawing at the thick strands and was almost through the first one when he heard the roar of an explosion.

His first thought was that the munitions shed had gone up, but when he raised his head, he saw a bright inferno blazing merrily away way over on the other side of the river, well outside the boundaries of the camp.

As he watched, another fireball bloomed to life beside the first, sending bits and pieces of a Loader flying in all directions as a deafening roar shook the air.

"-the fuck?" Flesh-Stick muttered to himself, wondering what the Loaders could possibly be fighting way over there.

And then he heard it. A voice, faint but familiar, rising over the sound of the explosions. Screaming in triumph. As the scream reached its crescendo, a third explosion reduced another Loader to spare parts.

It was that kid! They were after that pint-sized bitch! It looked like she was putting up a hell of a fight, too. Well, he hoped they caught her and wrung her scrawny neck. Maybe electrocuted the hell out of her in the process too. And then finished her off by grinding her into the dirt like the annoying little shitstain she was.

"You hear that?" he screamed out in the direction of the river. "I hope they _kill _you! I hope they crush you and grind you and _smash _you to little bloody bits! Go Hyperion! Go Hyperion! Go HYPERION!" he roared, shaking the net so violently that it swung wildly from side to side.

He made so much noise that it took him a little while to notice the soft hissing sound above him, and by that time, his vision was already starting to blur as a different kind of fuzziness began closing in around the corners of his mind. "H-huh…?" he said, looking up to see that a small hole had opened up in the Loader's palm-a small hole that was spewing faint white smoke.

Flesh-Stick tried to think of a few gas-related puns to make, but it suddenly seemed like too much effort. Just like standing. Or keeping his eyelids open.

As he slumped back against the world's most uncomfortable hammock, he wondered vaguely if he was going to wake up again. Of course, if he did, he'd wake up in Hyperion's clutches…and he knew all too well just what they did with their captured prisoners.

He hoped the answer was "no."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

_Tha-thunk-tha-thunk-tha-thunk…_

It was the first thing he heard as he slogged reluctantly back to consciousness. The first thing he felt. Gentle. Rhythmic. Comforting. It sank through his numb body and rattled his bones pleasantly.

_Tha-thunk-tha-thunk-tha-thunk…_

There were other things now, things beginning to prick vaguely at the corners of his mind. Things that he probably should start thinking about…maybe even worrying about. Things to remember. Things to find out.

Unpleasant things.

_Tha-thunk-tha-thunk-tha-thunk…_

The rumbling beneath him was not unpleasant though, and it went on and on, providing a soothing distraction for as long as he needed.

He let himself fall contentedly back into it.

"LET ME OUTTA HERE!" The scream pierced his pleasant daze like a lightning bolt. His eyes flew open and he raised his head instinctively, only to crack it painfully against some sort of metal bar.

"Ouch!" he whimpered groggily, reaching up to rub the back of his now aching head. His hand bumped against someone and he immediately received an elbow to the side.

"Don't touch me, Stick-Shift," the elbow's owner grumped.

He thought about correcting the man…something about the name didn't seem quite right, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He was dizzy and his head hurt and maybe he was wrong and that was his name. It didn't seem terribly important right then.

"Whaaagh….?" he moaned softly, all he could manage for a question right now. Maybe someone would understand it enough to answer it.

"If you're gonna barf, do it through the bars," the same voice said testily. "I already woke up in a puddle of someone's piss and that was bad enough. I don't need your half-used supper all over me too."

"Nrrghll…" Stick-Shift managed to reply. He didn't really feel like barfing. He didn't know what he felt like, but it wasn't that.

"Eh, shut up," the man next to him said, but there wasn't much venom behind his tone. He both looked and sounded defeated.

"I said let me outta here or I'm gonna thrash your hairy bandit butts!" came that same voice, the one that woke him. It was loud, but distant, and Stick-Shift raised his head curiously, looking for the voice's owner.

"Doesn't sound like your girlfriend is very happy about things, 'Stick," came another voice. This one belonged to a squat fellow with a scraggly beard. He looked at Stick-Shift with the same expression that had been on the man next to him. Mild contempt being swallowed by a sea of grim resignation.

"I have a girlfriend?" Stick-Shift wondered aloud. "Does she have big boobs?"

"Man, you're still really loopy from the gas," the bearded man said. Stick-Shift decided to call him Gimli. "You'd think that stupid mask would protect you some, but you've been sleeping longer than any of us."

Stick-Shift started struggling to get up on his hands and knees, a growl rising in his throat. Those sounded like fighting words to him.

"Hey cool it, Flesh-Stick," Gimli told him. "We've got bigger things to worry about."

_Flesh-Stick. Flesh-Stick! _That was it! That was the right name! His anger was forgotten immediately in favor of an almost overwhelming feeling of elation.

"I'm Flesh-Stick!" he said triumphantly to the man beside him, the one who had gotten his name wrong.

"You're annoying," the man replied, shifting a bit so he was facing away from Flesh-Stick.

"Yeah, well…you…you…you have HERPES!" Flesh-Stick shot back.

"Hey, not so loud!" the man said

Flesh-Stick ignored him and turned toward the bars behind him. Made of thick steel, they crisscrossed so tightly he doubted he'd be able to get much more than a hand through them. The tiny openings between each crisscross revealed an uninteresting desert landscape racing by outside. Rocks and cesium cacti and a smudge of mountains in the far distance. The sun hovered several handspans above them, which meant it was still Morning.

"Where're we going?" he muttered softly, not really expecting an answer. Even he knew that the question was pointless.

Gimli answered anyway. "Who gives a shit where we're _going?" _he said miserably. "They can take us to the goddamn moon for all the difference it makes. We're fucked no matter no matter where we end up because we know what's waiting for us at the end."

"What?" Flesh-Stick asked, the brief image of a flying Space Train giving way to more pressing concerns. "Is it a monster?"

"No, you dumb fucker!" said Herpes. "Hyperion nabbed us! We're guinea pigs! Lab rats! We're as good as dead right now!"

Slowly, several fragmented ideas began to make tenuous connections within Flesh-Stick's brain. Hyperion had them. Hyperion was where he and the rest of his crew used to send their captured prisoners. Herpes said they were all going to die by being turned into guinea pigs. Or rats.

"Hyperion's gonna…experiment on us…and turn us into rodents…and that'll kill us?" he said hesitantly.

"Eh, close enough," Herpes grumbled.

"I'm surprised you couldn't figure all this out on your own," said Gimli. "Didn't you used to send people to Hyperion for experiments?"

"Yeah, but not us," Flesh-Stick replied. He was _so_ confused. "_We're_ not supposed to be the experiments!"

"Yeah right," said a new voice. Flesh-Stick turned his head toward the new voice and saw a man he vaguely recognized glaring at him. A man with bright green eyes and scraggly gray hair. Flesh-Stick vaguely remembered that the man had held a position of authority back at the camp. Not the leader, but one of his cronies, perhaps.

"You're full of shit, 'Stick!" Gray Hair spat. "I heard you yelling 'Go Hyperion!' during the battle!"

"Wha-?" Flesh-Stick squeaked. Had he done that? He could barely remember the battle. "No! No, I didn't!"

"Bullshit!" Gray Hair snarled. "You sold us out, didn't you?"

"No!" Flesh-Stick protested again. That couldn't be right. If he'd sold the others out, why would he be here with them?

"Guess they must've double-crossed you," Herpes said, as if reading Flesh-Stick's mind. He couldn't do that, could he? Flesh-Stick had a wild urge to start thinking _Herpes's mother is a whore! _over and over again to see if the man reacted, but the venomous look in the Bandit's eyes told him that he might have more important things to worry about. It frightened him.

"Yeah, why pay you when they could just grab you and add another lab rat to the pile?" Gray Hair said, with a great deal of satisfaction in his voice. "Can't say I'm sorry."

Maybe Gray Hair wasn't, but the look of murderous rage on his former comrade's face told Flesh-Stick that _he _was about to be very sorry. He backed up instinctively and cracked his head on the metal bars he'd forgotten were behind him.

His yelp of pain choked off as Gray Hair seized him by the throat. Flesh-Stick struggled for both air and his freedom, but the other Bandit held fast, pinning him against the bars. "What do you say, boys?" Gray Hair said loudly to the others, although his eyes never leaving Flesh-Stick's. "Should we rip out his liver and make him eat it?"

"Not his liver," said Herpes, sounding eager. "How about his dick instead?"

"I like it!" said Gray Hair with a laugh. "Of course, if we do that, we'll have to change his name from Flesh-Stick to No-Stick." He grinned at Flesh-Stick. "How does that sound, 'Stick? You want a new name?"

"No no no no no no…" Flesh-Stick managed to croak with what little air he was able to get into his lungs. He squirmed helplessly, terror drowning out almost everything else, but somewhere, a lone fragment of his mind had made a connection between the dick-talk and an idea, and miraculously, it was able to push through the rest of the chaos and issue his body a single command.

"Look, he's learning his new name al-ACK!" Gray Hair's taunting ended in a scream as Flesh-Stick planted his booted foot between Gray Hair's legs with a single, solid kick.

Flesh-Stick fell to the floor of the car, breathing in great gasps, as Gray Hair dropped him to clutch at his crotch. Flesh-Stick twisted to his knees, just managing to dodge Herpes and another Bandit as they lunged at him. He dove between Gray hair's legs and heard a grunt as his two pursuers collided with his would-be mutilator.

He tried to push his way further into the car, but it was packed with his former comrades, barely allowing enough room for everyone to sit down. Flesh-Stick jumped over an unconscious Bandit, then pushed between two men who must have overheard his conversation with Gray Hair, because they tried to stop him. Flesh Stick pulled sharply away as one of them grabbed at his arm. He avoided being snatched, but his forward momentum overbalanced him and he went down with a cry, smacking his chin against someone's knee. He felt more hands reach for him and tried to crawl desperately away. He made it a few more feet before colliding with another set of bars. He'd reached the back of the car.

Hands seized him and tried to pull him back. He grabbed the bars in a death grip and fought with all his strength, but he knew it was only a matter of time before they overpowered him. It was him versus everyone else in the car, after all.

That wasn't what made him let go of the bars, however. No, it was the shock of seeing a familiar face suddenly appear at the bars of the car in front of his. Blond hair, rosy cheeks, blue eyes that looked like they hadn't known sleep in several periods. Eyes that flew wide in recognition, the same way his own did.

That little shit. That fucking bitch. That stupid fucking piece of fucking shitfuck!

She stared back at him from a car that was otherwise empty. She had bruises on her cheek and blood on her fingers. There was both anger and fear in her eyes, but they rapidly replaced by surprise.

"YOU!" both of them said at the exact same time.

Then she was gone as he was whisked away by several sets of hands, dragged back into the middle of the car where his attackers waited.

And yet, for a moment, he felt no fear. Because the sight of her face had torn through the veil of confusion he'd woken up to, and memories of the battle came flooding back.

No, all he could feel was absolute _triumph._

They had caught her. They had _caught _the little bitch!

_Go Hyperion…_

Then Gray Hair seized him once again. Gray Hair, who Flesh-Stick now recognized as a high-ranking Bandit named Bloody Gary. He slammed Flesh-Stick against the bars once more, while two other Bandits seized his arms and two more knelt down and held Flesh-Stick's legs in place. There would be no trying the same trick twice. As the three of him held him in place, Flesh-Stick suddenly found he could feel fear again.

"Where did you think you were going?" Bloody Gary asked with a snarl.

"It's not my fault…." was all Flesh-Stick could whimper. Now that he remembered the battle, he knew that his yelling "Go Hyperion" had nothing to do with betraying anyone.

"Shut the fuck up," Bloody Gary said quietly, his voice full of venom. One of his hands left Flesh-Stick's throat and traveled down the length of his belly, his nails raking red trails across his tattooed skin. Flesh stick drew in his breath sharply and waited for the hand to start digging for his liver. Or worse.

"Wait!" shouted "Gimli," who Flesh-Stick now recognized as a dour Bandit named Rusty Razor. "Don't kill him!"

"Oh, _fuck you, _Rusty!" roared Bloody Gary. "This shithead isn't getting away with selling us out!"

"He won't," said Rusty coldly, as Flesh-Stick tried to protest his innocence again and got a knee to the stomach. "Hyperion'll come up with much worse tortures for him than anything we could think of."

Bloody Gary hesitated, clearly torn. "It would be nice to see him get a taste of his own medicine," he finally admitted. "But…I still really want to thrash the shit out of him."

"Who says we can't?" said Rusty, with an uncharacteristic grin. "We'll just have to make sure we don't _kill _him. There are plenty of other things we can do to him."

A multitude of eager voices expressed their agreement, and what seemed like just as many hands began to reach for him.

Flesh-Stick began to scream.

And through the din, he thought he heard her voice scream back.


End file.
